How Much You Mean to Me
by kelly marie 123
Summary: My take on what happened after Ron & Harry saved Hermione at Malfoy Manor. Harry was preoccupied with Dobby, but what happened between Ron and Hermione inside Bill and Fleur's cottage? Rating for minor swearing.


Author's Note: Right, so, I'm sorry that I haven't posted an update on All Was Well, but I've had the idea for this fic taking up everything else in my mind. I promise I will continue that one soon!

NB: This takes place in chapter 23 of DH, "Malfoy Manor," right after Ron & Harry have escaped from the cellar (with Dobby's help) and are attempting to rescue Hermione from the Malfoys.

* * *

"STOP OR SHE DIES!" 

Ron looked around so quickly that he cricked his neck. With a jolt he realized that Bellatrix had grabbed Hermione and was now holding her short silver knife just below Hermione's throat. Ron's heart seemed to stop.

"Drop your wands," Bellatrix whispered, a terrified, manic gleam in her eye. "Drop them, or we'll see exactly how filthy her blood is!"

Ron's body tensed. He gazed, horrified, at Hermione's slack form, and was vaguely aware that Harry was mirroring his actions in the corner of the room.

"I said, drop them!" Bellatrix screeched, and she pressed the blade of the short knife into Hermione's throat, and Ron felt that a knife might as well have just gone through his heart. Drops of blood formed in a neat line on Hermione's throat.

Harry seemed to have shouted something; in any case, Ron wasn't listening; he only knew that the wand had dropped from his hand as he stared, helplessly, desperately, at Hermione.

Bellatrix straightened up a bit, glorifying in her victory over the two boys. "Good!" she shouted. "Draco, pick them up! The Dark Lord is coming, Harry Potter! Your death approaches!...Now, Cissy, I think we ought to tie these little heroes up again, while Greyback takes care of Miss Mudblood. I am sure the Dark Lord will not begrudge you the girl, Greyback, after what you have done tonight."

All the breath seemed to leave Ron's lungs, but before he could even think one horrified thought, there was a loud noise and the chandelier crashed to the floor. Bellatrix ducked out of the way just in time, flinging Hermione's tortured body from her.

Ron reacted without thinking and plunged himself into the wreckage of the chandelier. The goblin was stuck, too, but Ron didn't have a second thought for the creature—Hermione was under there, her body being crushed by the chandelier's weight, as if her body hadn't been through enough tonight…

Narcissa was shrieking, and so was her sister, and Dobby was saying something in his squeaky voice, but Ron had eyes only for Hermione, and her scratched face, and the bit of her arm that was pinned under the chandelier…

"Ron—" came Harry's voice, and Ron looked upward, "catch—and GO!" And Harry tossed a wand into Ron's waiting grasp. Without a second thought, Ron clutched Hermione's body in one arm and the wand in the other, spun on the spot, and Disapparated.

_Shell Cottage, Shell Cottage, Oh God, please—Shell Cottage, Shell Cottage—_

And suddenly he was on the ground again, but it was fresh air he was breathing—air that smelled as salty as the sea.

"Oh thank God!" he shouted. He was on his knees in Bill and Fleur's garden, panting heavily, and still clutching Hermione's body as the most glorious relief, mingled with a residue of horror, swept over him.

"RON!" came his brother's voice. Bill hurried out the back door of the cottage, Fleur on his heels, with her long silvery hair swinging behind her.

"Ron, what—Ron?!" Bill looked horrified as Ron crawled a few spaces away from Hermione's limp form and retched all over the grass. Ron took deep steadying breaths and prepared to throw up again.

"Bill—we must get 'Ermione eenside, look at ze state of her…."

"No," said Ron firmly, "No, I'm fine, I'll take her…"

He expected Bill to argue, to ask questions, but his brother was momentarily distracted. "Is that Harry over there? What the—" And he and his wife hurried down the garden path and closer to the cliff, where Harry was.

Ron spit a bit on the grass, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and crawled back to Hermione.

"Oh, Hermione, oh, please, please be okay…"

"Ron?" Luna and Dean were standing awkwardly in the doorway, looking like they couldn't believe they were alive and free. "Ron, is there anything we can do? It looks as if Hermione has rather been through a lot…"

"She has, Luna…I need to get her inside."

"Here, let me help you," said Dean, walking forward.

"No," said Ron. Dean looked taken aback. "I'm sorry Dean, I just—er, I'd rather like to do this myself."

Dean nodded his understanding, Luna gave Ron an understanding look, and after a second they too hurried after Bill and Fleur.

Ron bent down over Hermione again, brushing her hair away from her face and whispering to her.

"It's gonna be okay, My-nee, everything's going to be fine, don't worry…"

And with a great heave he picked up her slack body and carried her into the house. The place looked as cozy as it had over Christmastime, but he strode straight past the plate of cookies on the table, up the stairs, and into the small bedroom that had been his those few awful months ago…

"Here we go," he said softly, laying Hermione on the single bed. He sat down next to her and examined her more closely, assessing the damage. There were cuts on her face and her hands, no doubt due to the falling chandelier, and he could see the bright red line across her throat, where the blood was still warm and wet.

In a kind of frenzied stupor, he hurried out of the room and into the bathroom, where he seized a washcloth and ran it under the faucet quickly. Then, still more quickly, he crossed the hall back to the bedroom where Hermione was. She still lay on the bed looking like she'd been through hell, and Ron's heart seemed to have lodged in his throat.

He sat down by her side once more. Slowly, gingerly, he dabbed at the cut on her throat with the warm washcloth. He wanted to wipe away the blood, wanted to get rid of the proof that Hermione had been touched at all—

Suddenly she made a soft noise, like an owl hooting feebly, and he gasped. "Hermione? Hermione, can you hear me?"

Her eyelids fluttered for a moment and then opened. She blinked at him several times.

"Hermione, are you okay?"

She turned her head this way and that, examining her surroundings, and her body relaxed as she realized she was no longer in danger. "How did we get away?" she whispered.

The intensity of her gaze was breathing new life into him and yet ripping open his heart all at once. He hated that note of pain in her voice—

"Dobby saved us," he replied. And he quickly recounted everything that had happened down in the cellar.

"And then Harry and I ran up the stairs and—"

"And you burst into the room," Hermione said quietly. "That's the last thing I remember—I thought, _Oh__, thank God_, and I think I fainted…"

Ron could do nothing but stare at her. He looked unabashedly at her face, hardly believing that she was still there, that her rich brown eyes still had that spark in them, that her chest was rising and falling, because she could _breathe_, because she wasn't dead….

"Where are we?" she asked him.

"Bill and Fleur's place. Shell Cottage."

She lay there in silence for a minute, taking everything in.

"My throat hurts," said Hermione, touching the spot. "What—what the—? She stared at her bloody red fingers in disbelief.

"She—Bellatrix—she…she was going to…to slice your throat, she had the knife held up to you and everything, she pressed it into your skin and the b-blood—the blood ap-appeared…"

And with that, he lost control. His shoulders shook and his throat was constricted, he couldn't breathe, hot tears were pouring out of his eyes; he pressed his face into the bedcovers and thought wildly that both of his best friends had now seen him break down and sob….

"Ron," said Hermione's voice, "Ron, please—please don't cry, I'm okay, I'm f-fine."

He sobbed more than ever. "We almost lost you," he said, and his voice was muffled by the quilt on the bed. "I heard you screaming, over and over, and I thought they were going to kill you, and Greyback said he was going to—to—"

"I know, I know, it's okay," she said soothingly, rubbing his back as he cried. "Ron, really, I'm fine, I'm really fine."

"You're just trying to be brave because you've never seen me like this," he said in a thick voice. "That was the most terrified I've ever been in my life, more than when Ginny was in the Chamber and when Dad got attacked by the s-snake….I heard you screaming, screaming while she tortured you, and Hermione, I n-never want to hear that s-sound again."

Hermione stopped rubbing his back and hugged him instead, resting her head on his shoulder blade while he cried. He felt the pressure on his back, but it was reassuring and calmed him down—she was here, she was talking, she was squeezing him as he tried to steady his breathing.

After a couple of minutes the tears had stopped and his breathing had returned to normal. Hermione noticed and sat up, releasing her hold on him. He lifted his head, somewhat shamefully, and wiped his eyes, noticing as he did so that her face was red; she too had been crying.

"I've never seen you care this much."

She said it simply, stated it as a fact, not in that tone she sometimes took with him—but the words hung in the air.

"Never care this much? I care this much about you always, _always_—"

"I sometimes forget," said Hermione. "That night you left—I've never felt that awful, Ron, never…"

He listened to her, wanting to hear and not hear at the same time.

"And I ran after you and I called your name! Over and over! And you didn't come back…I was just left there, calling desperately for you, hoping that you cared enough to come back. But you didn't."

"I did care," he said. "I did, please, please know that I did—I tried right away to return, you know that, I told you that—"

"And I…" she sniffed. "I cried for days. More than a week, I think. And just when I thought I was doing better, something would make me think of you, and I would start crying all over again."

She seemed to have finished. Ron rather thought that she had been waiting to say this bit for months but that the opportunity had never arisen. He hung his head, finally realizing everything he had ever done to cause her pain….

"I'm never leaving you again," he said firmly. "I caught a glimpse tonight of what my life means without you. You don't know what it was like in that cellar, Hermione, it was like the most important piece of my heart was being wrenched from me, tortured and abused— and I was down there, running around and yelling my head off, and it was completely helpless, and I thought I was going to lose you forever."

She stared at him intently for a moment, and he took the opportunity to study her again—not her eyes or her mouth, but the way her soul shone through her face, the way her heart was laid out perfectly in her expression.

"I heard you yelling for me," Hermione said. "It only made the situation that much worse—I thought I was seconds away from death, or from being mangled by Greyback, and all I could hear was your voice…and your face kept surfacing in my mind...and I wished so much that you were there."

Her words touched that piece of Ron's heart that was just for her; they affected him in that fluttery kind of way, but tonight the sensation was tempered with relief and, above all, realization.

"I've been such an idiot," he said baldly.

For the first time, she smiled.

He blinked and continued. "I'm sorry they hurt you."

She seemed to know that "they" meant not only the Death Eaters, but also Ron, and everything he had ever done to hurt her—Lavender, the Yule Ball, his aspersions on SPEW, his desertion. She nodded slightly and held her arms open for a hug.

Now Ron smiled for the first time in hours. He pulled her to him and wrapped her tight, stroking her long hair with his hand, reveling not just in her physical touch but in the intensity of the emotional connection he was feeling.

She squeezed him back equally hard, breathing lightly against him and allowing him to run his fingers through her wild locks.

After what seemed a sufficient amount of time, they broke apart.

"You know what I just can't figure out," said Hermione, searching him, "is when you grew up so much—what happened to that tiny, rude boy who used to throw insults at me all the time and copy my homework and call me a bossy know-it-all who had no friends?"

Ron let out a tiny breath of laughter. "Well…," he countered, "what happened to change that bossy little know-it-all?"

"Oh, goodness," said Hermione. "The hell if I know. I suppose she figured out that homework wasn't the most important thing in the world."

"I think a better answer," said Ron, "is that she grew up to be braver, more brilliant, and more beautiful than ever, and had enough nerve to stay with Harry when he needed her most, and was willing to lay down her life to protect her friends."

Hermione stared at him, unable to process his compliments and sincerity.

"And," Ron finished, "and…I think I love that girl, the one who used to be the bossy little know-it-all."

Hermione blushed and looked down at her bedcovers, drinking in his words.

"Look," said Ron, "I know this probably is really bad timing for me to say it, but Merlin knows when I'll ever have the guts to get it out there again." He placed his hand on top of one of hers, rubbing his fingers over the recent cuts and scratches. It was enough to make her look at him.

"Hermione, I love you, okay?" he said. He was surprised to find that his nerves weren't on high alert, as they usually were; instead, he felt heartened, resolute, even at peace, because he knew this was the direction his life was supposed to take….

She squeezed his hand and lowered her eyes again, giving a small, shy smile to the quilt. "Okay," she said. He knew she wasn't surprised; that she wasn't going to go all crazy on him like Lavender would have. She was taking in his words, after years of waiting for them, and he let her for a moment.

"I know this isn't really going to work out right now," Ron continued. "And frankly, I wouldn't want it to. I know the number one priority right now is helping Harry, and trying to stay safe and alive." Hermione nodded. "But, well, if we ever come out of this whole damn thing, whenever that may be, I'd like us to…you know…."

She laughed. "Yeah, me too."

"I just wanted to tell you—because, well, I mean, I always thought I had ages, but all I could think tonight was that if something had happened to you, I would never have forgiven myself for not telling you how I really felt. How much you mean to me."

He raised his free hand to her face and tucked her hair behind her ears, thinking that she had never looked more beautiful than she did just then—in the aftermath of her bravery and her trauma and her willingness to give her life for her friends.

"Thanks, Ron," Hermione said finally.

He raised his eyebrows. "Is that seriously all you can say right now?"

She laughed again. "No." She paused, presumably to gather her thoughts. "You saved my life, tonight, Ron, and not just by charging in there. You were the only thing keeping me going while she was—you know. Your voice and your image in my head and just—you.

"I've loved you for a while now. I don't even know how long it's been. One minute you were my best friend and the next, you were my best friend that I grew to have feelings for…and despite everything we've been through together, I've always felt that way.

"I guess any boy who's willing to burp up slugs for me and risk his life for me—well, I'd say that boy's a keeper."

Hermione beamed at him, and Ron grinned back, his heart completely full of joy and peace and something he assumed must be love.

"Well then," he said, with an abrupt return to his usual manner, "I guess now all we have to do is destroy a few more pieces of You-Know-Who's soul, allow Harry to vanquish his arse, and then we can get snogging…."

She rolled her eyes. "You're a prat."

Ron laughed. "Yeah, I guess so."

There was a knock on the door.

"Ron? 'Ermione?" It was Fleur.

"Yes, come in," said Hermione, gently releasing her hand from Ron's grip.

Fleur entered warily, sizing up Hermione and the condition she was in; her eyes darted to Ron as well.

"'Ow are you feeling?"

"I think I'll be okay, thanks," said Hermione with a weak smile.

"Well, zat ees a relief," sighed Fleur. "Do eizzer of you know why 'Arry 'as an 'ouse-elf with 'im?"

"Yeah, that's Dobby," said Ron. "He saved us tonight."

Fleur's face fell.

"What is it?" Hermione asked.

"Zis Dobby, 'e… 'e is dead."

Ron felt the blow in his stomach; it was a dull one, but a blow nonetheless. Hermione looked near tears again and Ron wanted to curse Fleur for bringing the news that upset her.

"'Arry is in ze backyard, digging a grave for ze body."

Ron looked forlornly at Hermione; she met his eyes and he knew they were thinking the same thing: Dobby's death jolted them back to their present reality, the one with Horcruxes and living in tents and _death_….

"I'll go help Harry finish digging," said Ron, getting to his feet.

Fleur nodded and turned to Hermione. "You 'ave many cuts on your face and hands—I will go get some medicine for you."

"Thank you, Fleur," said Hermione as the woman glided out of the room.

Ron, now standing on his feet, looked down at Hermione and grimaced.

"Dobby," he said.

"Dobby," she repeated sadly. "Harry's going to be crushed."

"I know. Listen, you sit tight here, okay? You've been through enough tonight, and I reckon you're going to have a lot of bruising—a chandelier fell on top of you."

Hermione looked puzzled but didn't say anything.

"I'll go and help Harry, and then I'll come back and sit with you some more, okay?"

"Alright," said Hermione.

Ron stood awkwardly for a moment. "Er—here. Let me tuck you in."

Hermione looked surprised but pleased as he helped her get under the blankets and tucked them securely around her.

"You know I'm not going to be able to sleep, Ron," she said.

"I know," said Ron, "but just try and rest. That bitch did a number on you tonight."

Hermione smirked. "I'm not even going to bother scolding you for your language—"

"Oh, like you don't want to say it yourself," said Ron.

"Alright, fine," Hermione admitted, "she's a bitch and I hope You-Know-Who punishes the pants off her."

Ron laughed. "That's my girl." He leaned down, smoothed her hair back from her forehead, and kissed her on the cheek, just as, ages ago, she had kissed him before his first Quidditch match.

"You are being uncharacteristically sweet tonight…." Hermione murmured.

"No worries," said Ron, shrugging, "before you know it, I'll do something that's completely pigheaded. You'll be snapping at me again in no time."

He walked to the door and stopped with his hand on the doorknob.

"And Hermione," he said, turning round to look at her, "I know I've already said it, but it'll be a while before you hear it again, what with all this You-Know-Who crap going on, so…I love you."

And he strode from the room, leaving her beaming in his wake.

* * *

Cool, so it's 4 in the morning and I've now JUST finished writing this fic. Looks like I'll have a lovely morning! I couldn't help it though—I've been playing with this idea for more than a week now. I think this may be my favorite fic I've ever written…let me know your thoughts! **PLEASE REVIEW!!!**


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